The present invention relates to a method of combining programs, namely, to a method of editing source programs in a structure editor having therein a syntax or a syntax rule of an objective language of the source programs, and in particular, to a source program combining method suitable for combining a plurality of source programs to synthesize a new source program.
Conventionally, as editing methods or input methods of a source program in a structured editor having a syntax rule, there have been known program editing or program input methods described in the JP-A-61-234434 and JP-A-61-202224.
According to these methods, when a particular source program is to be edited, an operator can edit the source program without considering the details of the syntax rule, which facilitates the editing of the source program.
However, in the prior art technology above, a single source program is set as an object of the editing, namely, consideration have not been given to the editing of a plurality of source programs and hence it is impossible to mechanically combine a necessary portion of a source program including the syntactically identical content with another program so as to obtain or to synthesize a new source program, which leads to a problem that the pertinent necessary portion is required to be inputted by the operator and hence an onerous operation is required for the editing.